Xenu Next Generation Home Platform
Based on the excellent work by @onedr0p in home-ops and cluster-template community.
With the release of Flux Operator MCP Server, I was able to integrate my gitops workspace with Github Copilot. With the use of custom instructions Copilot is able to use the tools provided by the MCP (and this repo) to interact with the cluster.
This functionality is still in development, but it has been a real game changer in terms of LLM usefulness for cluster management
For example, I can ask the Agent to investigate running pods and propose improvements to their running configs, such as health probes.
You can see the custom instructions here (work in progress).
I decided to keep using ingress-nginx until Gateway API matures.
I had a great experience with Traefik in my non-k8s environment, so that's another option as well.
- Talos Linux - API-driven, Kubernetes-focused Linux distribution
- Flux - continuous delivery via a GitOps model
- SOPS combined with age - secrets management
- cloudflared - provision Cloudflare Tunnels for publicly exposed endpoints
- external-dns - on-demand DNS record provisioning inside Samba (Active Directory) DNS with Kerberos auth
- Longhorn - cloud-native distributed block storage for Kubernetes
- CloudNativePG - deploy HA PostgreSQL clusters on K8s with ease
- postgres-operator - operator to manage DBs and roles
| Name | Model | CPU | RAM | Storage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| tinynode01 | ThinkCentre M920q Tiny | i5-8600T (6c/6t/9MB) | 32 GB DDR4 3200 | Samsung 980 Pro 2TB NVMe |
| tinynode02 | ThinkCentre M920q Tiny | i5-8600T (6c/6t/9MB) | 32 GB DDR4 3200 | Inland Performance Plus 1TB NVMe |
| tinynode03 | ThinkCentre M920q Tiny | i5-8600T (6c/6t/9MB) | 32 GB DDR4 3200 | Solidigm SSDPFKKW010X7 1TB NVMe |
The 3 M920q nodes were purchased from eBay for around $300. Similar models can routinely be found (as of March 2025) for a similar price. Some of the other parts, like SSDs and some of the RAM, were scavenged from my inventory. Nevertheless, I am listing the BOM with estimated costs for planning purposes.
| Item | Model | Unit Cost | Source | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compute Node | ThinkCentre M920q Tiny | $100 | eBay | Excellent condition |
| 32 GB DDR4 RAM | Crucial CT2K16G4SFRA32A | $45 | Best Buy (Sale) | Already had one kit |
| 1 TB NVME | Inland Performance Plus 1TB NVMe | $69.99 | MicroCenter | 700TBW endurance |
| 10 GbE NIC | SuperMicro AOC-STGN-I2S Low Profile | ~$18 | eBay | 3D printed a custom baffle |
| 1.5M DAC Cables | SFP-H10GB-CU1.5M Cisco Compatible | $11 | eBay (Private Label Networks) |
With the release of Talos v1.10, and its support for User Volumes, I was able to eliminate the use of Proxmox and switches all my k8s nodes over to bare metal.
Added a section in the README describing the new AI integration.
- STH Forum: Lenovo Project TinyMiniMicro Reference Thread
- github.com/a-little-wifi/Tinyriser open-source PCIe riser for Lenovo 8/9th gen Tiny PCs